Lady Antonia Fraser Critical Essay | Critical Essay by A. S. Byatt

Critical Essay by A. S. Byatt

Antonia Fraser's new biography [Mary Queen of Scots] corrects many myths, endorses a few, and satisfies our double curiosity about Mary, both as a queen and as a real woman. Lady Antonia sees history as an art, not as an impersonal science, which does not mean that she is not thorough….

Her book is very long but consistently gripping, and much of its success depends on the creation of a real world of physical and emotional detail…. But the dramatic highlights—Darnley's murder, Mary's flight to England—have the narrative sweep and flow, and appeal to the imagination in the way they should.

Elizabeth appears little; she is presented, deliberately, largely as the shadowy queen and cousin of Mary's own dangerous fantasy of the friend over the border who would help and understand. But the inevitable contrast of fates and symbolic roles is illuminating…. Lady Antonia's impressive indictment of Mary's Scottish lords,...
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